What in the name of sanity is going on with politicians lately?
First we had the Swedish FRA law mandating that all internet traffic that passes national borders (in effect nearly all traffic) shall be routed through FRA for surveillance for “threats to the nation.” Citing a poignant part from the Wikipedia article:
According to the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment’s Director-General, Ingvar Ã…kesson, they destroy the data collected after eighteen months, but they confirm that they have, in fact, been collecting information not just on foreigners but also on Swedes as the presence of Swedish search terms used on the data would indicate.
So for a decade they have conducted illegal surveillance on Swedish citizens. No politicians ever talk about holding them responsible for their crimes. The general opinion seems to be “but the FRA law makes it legal, so then we can turn a blind eye to the decade of criminal activity.”
The FRA law went in effect on January 1, 2009. I assume that everything I write on this blog passes through FRA, including my password for the admin interface. Anyone that uses Hotmail or Gmail have their passwords intercepted, as well as all the emails they read.
Now we have the next outrage around the corner: the telecommunications data retention act.
This act requires ISPs to store metadata — each and every IP address you communicate with and when, how long the communication lasted. If it is a cell phone call, the cell phone carrier will record who you called, how long the call lasted, and where you were when making the call, turning your cell phone into a government tracking device.
This isn’t paranoid rambling; this is openly written in the act.
In the UK the police may be able to hack into computers without a warrant and access the contents of your computer. Other countries can ask British police for access to any results of the intrusion.
Here in Sweden there’s a similar inquest that’s already written. The government is debating the proposition for the law, and the Social Democrats in the opposition are positive to this.
In the same inquest it is openly written that passwords, cryptographic keys and anonymizing proxy services are seen as a problem that needs to be solved.
In the UK it is already a criminal offence punishable by prison time to not surrender the keys to encrypted files. I expect that to be law here within five years if this keeps up.
This is all done in the name of “fighting terrorism.”
Terrorism can threaten freedom and democracy. But only politicians can destroy it. And they are dismantling our freedom piece by piece.
I am a member of the Swedish Pirate Party. It is the only party opposed to the FRA law and other freedom-crushing laws. You should join too.
